Malden mayor dips into reserves in proposed budget

Malden's next fiscal year budget proposal was revealed at the City Council's Tuesday, May 23 meeting, with an increase of almost $7 million over the prior fiscal year.

The city's overall budget for fiscal 2018 is proposed at $180,198,128, up from $173,298,221 in fiscal 2017. In order to pay for the increase, Mayor Gary Christenson calls for utilizing more than $6 million from the city's reserves to balance the budget.

Christenson, who was not present at the meeting due to a family matter, wrote in a letter to the council that he is "not pleased in having to rely upon the utilization of reserves to balance this budget." He does point out, however, that Malden is expected to clear about $5 million in free cash this October, leaving just around a $1.4 million net loss in reserves.

While the city has used significant portions of its reserves to balance the budget in the past, the mayor does indicate in the letter that it may not be necessary in the near future. In 2020, he wrote, the city's current debt obligations drop by around $2 million, down from the over $15 million in the FY18 budget, and the city will start receiving its $1 million annual payments from the Wynn Resorts casino.

"The budgets are never easy and this one is no different," Christenson wrote. "We just have to hang in there and continue to work our way through this."

New parking department

The budget contains some moves and additions over FY17, the biggest of which is the creation of a new Parking Department. Parking enforcement was previously within the Traffic Department with some oversight from the Police Department, but talks of creating a new, citywide parking sticker program prompted the creation of the new department.

Over the course of this current council term, the Ordinance Committee took up the parking sticker topic, but ultimately found it fruitless if the structure did not exist within the city for enforcement.

The new department, budgeted at just under $650,000, adds 3.5 administrative positions and eight new enforcement positions, the latter resulting in 150 additional hours a week of parking enforcement. That is on top of the existing 13 parking enforcement positions currently budgeted in the Traffic Department, which will all transfer over to the new Parking Department.

With the budget in hand, the Finance Committee will begin discussing it in the hopes of passing it by the end of June.